When you go through customs at the Havana airport, you see this digital screen of an analog clock.

To be convincing, the sweep second-hand jerks a bit every time it moves. And thus you are introduced to the temporal paradox which is Cuba’s capital.

The vast majority of cars on the streets of Havana are from two eras, the last decade and the period immediately before the revolution and US embargo, around 1959.

The time machine affect has numerous positive aspects. The old city streets often have wide parks running through the middle. A crippled economy means there is little traffic. High gasoline costs mean that vehicles rarely have just one person in them. Huge trees line the streets.

Hawina with one of the many huge trees.

There are some innovations which other places would do well to mimic. Stop lights on major intersections count down the number of seconds before they turn either red or green, to better inform drivers.

The city streets in Havana are named in a novel and clever way. The main dividing street is Avenido Paseo. To the west the streets are increasing in even numbers. To the east the streets are lettered. Perpendicular to these, running parallel to the coast the streets are odd numbered. Thus you can tell uniquely where you are by just knowing 10th and 11th or C and 9th. No confusing East and West like DC or Streets and Avenues like NYC.

The architecture favors balconies, flat roofs and porches and the social structures take advantage of these. Many doors down the street are left open with people inside and outside often visible. Most buildings were built before there was air conditioning and the architecture encourages placing people in breezes.

In the cascading chaos which is the Trump administration, political organizers need to watch for their opportunities. I think the president’s callous repeal of DACA is a brilliant opportunity. DACA’s unraveling will lead to 800,000 young people facing deportation and in many cases, to countries they have never lived in. To avoid the likely nightmarish political fall out, Trump has given Congress 6 months to find a legislative fix, but immigration legislation is notoriously tricky for Congress. Next spring will be a highly visible time for discussions on immigration for House Republicans facing primaries and re-election bids come November. It is unlikely a sharply divided Congress can find a solution. In the US in 2017, immigration might be even harder than health care to get legislation through the Senate.

It is time to build a new underground railway for these dreamers. One part of this could be a social network site, similar to a dating site, where DACA immigrants could find hosts who were willing to house them in new locations. It would need stronger encryption and security than a conventional social network because the government would be trying to hack it. And it should be augmented by volunteers who are looking at enhancing host offers. For example, you might have a room for a Dreamer in your house, but you might not know how to help the Dreamer in your town. Another volunteer would scope out your town seeing if the transplanted DACA person could find work, social, and educational opportunities in your town and link them up to these resources.

It is a big deal for a DACA person to leave their home and go underground. But it is even a bigger deal to be deported to a country where you likely have no ties. Obama made a promise to the Dreamers. “If you step out of the shadows and into the system (register, pay social security, maintain a spotless criminal record, pay an annual fee of $500) then you can stay without fear of deportation.” Trump has broken that promise. Congress is unlikely to fix this. So it falls on us. And for some Dreamers, it means returning to the shadows.

Building a social network to help immigrants finds hosts and staffing volunteers to help them land safely and comfortably is the humane and fair thing to do. It is also criminal. When outlaws are in control of the country, to make things right, you might just have to become an outlaw too.

The person who should be getting fired is Tom Fanning the CEO of Southern Company. Fanning is dodging the opportunity to cancel these last two reactors under construction in the US when there are numerous justifications to get out of the project. Because of Fanning’s stubborn commitment to the Vogtle reactors, the rate payers of Georgia will pay dearly for decades for electricity that they don’t need and opportunities for climate disruption abatement will be lost as resources are misallocated to these reactors.

Can Vogtle learn from Summer? The Vogtle reactors are quite similar to the Summer reactors that Carter canceled this July. Both sites were adding two Westinghouse AP 1000 large conventional reactors (a design which has never successfully be completed). [Westinghouse went bankrupt in March of this year.] Both were expansions to existing plants. Both Summer and Vogtle started the licensing process in 2008, both began construction in 2013, both were supposed to be finished before 2020 to get a significant tax credit. Neither could make that deadline because they are both so delayed (costing ratepayers even more). Both were only possible because their respective PUC’s gave them nearly a blank check in that it let them start billing rate payers years and perhaps decades before the reactors went online. Both of them got offered billions for Toshiba (Westinghouse’s parent company) as a settlement(though it is unclear if Toshiba will stay in businesslong enoughto pay anything). Both had huge still unresolved technical problems in building the plant.

Fanning (left) in front of Vogtle Reactors 1 and 2

So why is Fanning and Southern Company continuing this uneconomical reactor project? Because Fanning personally and Southern Company will benefit significantly even if the construction of these reactors lose money or if they are later abandoned. Despite Vogtle being over $3 billion over budget, the nuclear utility has already made over $1 billion in profits for this fiasco. This is because they are paid cost plus profit, even when the project is mismanaged and over budget. Fanning’s personal compensation increased 34% last year to over $15 million per year when the Vogtle losses and delays were well understood.

Southern Companies nuclear engineers are busy crafting lies to submit to the Public Service Commission (PSC). This PSC has already indicated that it will basically give them what ever they want. The form of this huge lie is that it will only cost $27 billion to complete this pair of reactors, nearly twice the original cost estimate. These same engineers were equally confident of their first cost estimate for this project. What will the actual cost of these reactors be? If it is average for US built reactors it will be closer to $42 billion, but it does not matter, for Southern Company has a whole collection of deceptions lined up to buttress their current lies.

Some lies are easy. Georgia Power has terrifically mismanaged the project, in part by their own design. They have flatly refused to use the computerized tracking systems (Integrated Project Systems – IPS) which are industry standards for large complex jobs of this type. They have completely captured the regulator who is doing basically no analysis of this project and simply granting delays and budget increases whenever they are asked for. The Georgia Public Service Commission (PSC) has not brought in outside experts to review the design or delays. The PSC continues to pretend that the sunk costin thisproject matter, they do not economically only politically. They have not head public hearings. Nor have they listened to expert critics who were warning them of the myriad problems this project presents.

Vogtle Cooling Tower – Big is not necessarily better

We will hear about how we need a mix of fuels (with no talk about how expensive they are). We will hear about how nuclear reactors are important for national security (despite years of denying the link between reactors and bombs). We will hear that these reactors will produce carbon free electricity (when renewables and battery storage OR energy efficiency would produce/save more power for less money, with a smaller carbon footprint). Finally, we will hear building reactors is important for the future of nuclear power in the US.

Let’s be clear, large scale nuclear reactor construction in the US is dead. Westinghouse bankruptcy is important. The recent canceling of the Summer, Levy, and Lee reactors brings to an end all likely full sized US reactor construction, except Vogtle. The nuclear Renaissance is over, we are hopefully heading into the nuclear dark ages.

This is the moment for the anti-nuclear movement and the citizens of Georgia to keep pounding on the door of the Georgia PSC and tell them we don’t want this failed project to waste more money and distract from the important work of climate disruption mitigation. Vogtle is a failed project being propped up by poor legislation and greedy utilities which don’t actually care about cost effective power generation or climate disruption.

As of this writing, over 2,000 people have been rescued from flooded areas and another 30K are expected to evacuate the US’s 4th largest city.

Hurricane Harvey Hits Houston

Harvey is being called a once in a 500-year storm. It is thethird 500-year storm in to hit Houston in the last three years. And with other super storms like Sandy and Katrina in recent memory, it seems like something more than bad luck is going on. Is climate disruption responsible for Harvey? We can’t really know. But we know our activities are likely making things worse.

Penn State professor and climate change researcher Michael Mann, who led a recent study that found a human “fingerprint” on extreme weather events, wrote in The Guardian on Monday that while it’s impossible to say whether climate change “caused” Harvey, “[t]here are certain climate change-related factors that we can, with great confidence, say worsened the flooding” in Texas.

Harvey has already closed Houston refining capacity of over 2.2 million barrels per day. Clean up will cost hundreds of millions, repairs could cost more.

But what of the irony here, that Houston is in the center of climate disruption denial and is now suffering from an unusual series of serious storms? No one deserves a climate crisis. But the corporate executives and the tens of thousands of oil company employees, who unlike the entire rest of the world denied the effect of their work, are paying the price for their lies and deception today.

NY Times 2015 – we are number 1!

Postscript: Houston itself votes Democratic in most political races (including the last presidential one), who are better than the Republicans on climate disruption issues. And none of the above criticisms are meant to discourage the current rescue efforts, which will most often benefit the economically disadvantaged in the area. And there will be lots of decisions as to what to rebuild in Houston and the area affected by Harvey. If we are unlucky or too quiet, then we will repeat the Shock Doctrine scenario, where capitalists profit and poor people are screwed over (as happened after Katrina). If we organize cleverly and apply immense political pressure, after the refinery clean ups are completed, we will focus on sustainable infrastructure and meet the needs of all the residents of the area.

“Can I kiss you?” it seemed like a perfectly reasonable question. It was asked across a cuddle pile in the midst of a party up at the conference site where several people were making new romantic connections.

“I don’t really know you very well.” Was the reply I was slightly surprised to hear. But then something really powerful and slightly profound happened. Nothing.

The mood did not change. No one got embarrassed and felt like they needed to leave. No one laughed at the rejection or felt sorry for someone. The party just moved on.

What this does is create comfort and safety. It makes people feel like their boundaries are going to be respected. This in turn often helps them to push limits out. This reveals new possibilities and new connections.

And thus the party drifted right up to the edge of becoming an orgy. As a funologist, this is something I want to understand. For when you push aside all the sophomoric jokes and embarrassment about what orgies are, assuming they are done in a healthy consent environment, they are daring and liminal events. They change peoples lives.

And in this case, the “almost” does not really matter. Everyone could feel the possibility, we had created the space that was that safe and daring.

If you live in community for a while, traditions form around you. And so it is with Hawina’s birthday. Part of the evenings festivities will be us singing the English translation of the Dutch birthday song. This is a song that is only sung this way here, Hawina imported it herself by accident many years ago when someone asked for her tradition to be adapted to local culture.

Werewolves is another birthday favorite game. Some people call this game Mafia. It is a good birthday game because it requires at least 8 people to play. In our first pass, we had 15 people and Sky played god. I was the first person killed. I did not even get a chance to accuse anyone else before i was silenced. I did not take it personally. Hawina won (except the last towns person (new member Emily) was “the Hunter” role, who gets to kill one person as they die, and thus killed Hawina who was the last surviving werewolf – so no one won).

Emily plays a mean guitar and ensures no one survives

In the second round of werewolves, i got killed in the first “evening” again! Now i had to take it personally. Hawina won again with Emily as her “lover” and they survived all the werewolves. [If you are unfamiliar with this game there is an interesting and exhaustive article on wikipedia on it.]

Hawina on Greek Island famous for Pistachios

Part of the power of collective living is that we get to create our own holidays and rituals. After nearly two decades of doing birthdays, Hawina has this one just where she wants it.

Everyone from the Louisa communes who went to the Charlottesville anti-Alt Right protest made it home safe and none were arrested. Tragically, this is not true for everyone. Very specifically, it was not true for Heather Heyer, who was killed by an alt-right terrorist who drove a car into a crowd of protesters.

Shocking picture of people being hit by alt-right driver

Heather was a paralegal, she lived not far from Charlottesville. There is a gofundme crowd funder raising money for Heather’s family, in which her mother is quoted. “She died doing what was right. My heart is broken, but I am forever proud of her.”

Political officials and victims rights advocates often encourage journalists not to name mass killers. The person arrested for killing Heather Heyer is James Alex Fields Jr. They are in the middle of the following picture.

The shield has a fascist symbol on it.

The US President provided political cover for Fields by not mentioning white supremacy and claiming that there is violence from “many sides” at the protest. Fields tried to drive away, but was ultimately arrested. They are in jail in Cville.

One of the most important parts of this heavily promoted “Summer of Hate” key event, which had several alt-right star personalities is that it was pretty small. As with the KKK rally last month, the counter protesters out numbered the alt-right folks 5 or 10 to 1. This is reason for hope in the dark aftermath of this sad day.

There is very little public on Heather Heyers Facebook page, but one of the few things she does have up is one of my favorite quotes.